


Of All The Stars In The Universe

by raggirare



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/F, POV Child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 18:30:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4797881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raggirare/pseuds/raggirare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Commissioned fic for hannahandkim @ Tumblr</p>
<p>Hannah helping Kim raise Frankie, from Frankie's perspective.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of All The Stars In The Universe

Frankie had, from a very young age, always been taught to not talk to strangers. Her mother had taught her to be careful, and her teachers at the kindergarden were always sure to reinforce the idea. Her friends’ mothers, as well, had made sure to tug them away from the dads supervising their sons at the nearby playground that they would sometimes go to for playdates. But her mother had also always taught her to be kind and warm to everyone she meet ( _kindness is always rewarded and never defeated),_ so when there was a knock at the locked front door of their small home breaking through the sound of her cartoon on the small television, there was no hesitation. Small, bare feet stopped kicking back and forth and touched onto carpeted floor. Each short step was silent, none heavy enough to cause any sort of noise, as Frankie made her way towards the door. She paused in front of it to place another piece of popcorn from her bowl past crumb-covered lips and brush crumb-covered fingers against the sides of her pant legs in an attempt to clean the traces of food away. Once she deemed them clean enough, stubby fingers lifted to first turn the lock free with grind of metal against metal and a click, before they closed around brass to turn the doorknob.

The face that greeted her on the other side of the slab of wood was no stranger, and the familiar sight elicited a bright grin from the young child. Stubby arms lifted to wrap a hug around the woman’s knees, almost emptying the contents of her bowl all over the floor if not for a quick-thinking hand grabbing it from Frankie’s grasp and lifting it out of the way.

“Hello to you, too, Frankie,” the kind voice greeted, the same hand offering back the bowl once the embrace to the lower half of her body eased away. “Did you miss me? Did I miss any interesting dreams?”

The opportunity to talk more about her dreams left the young girl excited with a sudden rush of energy, and instead of returning to her place on the sofa, she instead stepped aside to let Hannah enter the house properly and then began to follow her around the small building she called her home. “I dreamt that the star dog you showed me last time came to life and jumped down from the sky!” she explained between mouthfuls of popcorn (and through them, on occasion, when she was too excited to stop and wallow first before she spoke).“And we played together around the cars! And we played fetch with the funny ball-on-a-stick that you find in cars! And then, and then, we played tag in a biiiiiiiiiiiig field—“ The girl took a pause in her snacking to put her arms out as wide as she could, bowl carefully gripped in one hand, to try and show just how big this field that she was trying to describe. “—And then we lay down on the grass with Mommy to watch the stars. And then the star dog had to go home for dinner and so did we, and then it was time to wake up. The star dog hasn’t come back to play, though. Mommy said that maybe he has to stay and play with the other star dogs as well, or maybe with other little girls and boys.”

“I think your Mommy is right,” Hannah said as she closed the fridge, a large pot held with both hands. “She is very smart. But just to be sure, we can go out tonight and look at the stars and see if we can find him. Or if we can’t find him tonight, maybe we can find the star bears.”

The prospect of finding something even bigger and more amazing than the dogs brought a new excitement to Frankie’s expression and it remained there even as she was shooed from the kitchen. She obeyed with eager anticipation, too caught up with looking forward to the promise of her favourite nighttime activity to try and stay in the kitchen with Hannah any longer.

It was something that had been happening for a long time, now. Frankie knew that because it had started before one birthday, and she had had another already, and there was always such a long time between birthday parties, so it had to have started a long time ago that Hannah had started to come over more and more often. Sometimes she would could come over at night and leave again with Frankie’s mom. Sometimes she would come over during the day and they would watch cartoons together. In the past few months, Hannah would come over and help cook dinner and then they would got out and lie on the front of the tow truck and watch the stars. Hannah had taught Frankie a lot about the stars, like how people and animals lived in the stars, like the hunter and his two dogs, or the big eagle that flew across the sky every night. (Really, Frankie couldn’t see the pictures Hannah pretended to draw, but she liked the stories that she would tell, so she never told Hannah that.)

Frankie’s favourite nights were the nights where Hannah or her mom would say it was too light to stay at home and they would all pile into the truck and drive far away from the town. Sometimes they would take a large blanket and lie down on it in a big open field in the dark (even then, Frankie couldn’t see Hannah’s pictures very well, but it was an easier place for her to play connect-the-dots to make her own pictures and make up her own stories to go with them, and her mom liked to as well, so she didn’t think it was a bad thing if they could have fun together like that), and other times they would do the same that they would do back home, with the young girl lying on the hood of the cab of the truck. If it was a particularly clear night, there were times where they would come out early, bringing their dinner with them to enjoy as a picnic together while watching the sun set over the horizon and count the stars as they slowly twinkled into view in the darkening sky. If Frankie had to choose, those were her favourites. Sure, they were the nights where she would fall asleep well before she could hear all of Hannah's stories, but they always brought the best dreams with them. She had had dreams of snot rockets clearing space in the skies, and dreams of star dogs leaping from their dark homes to run through the grass with her. She had dreams of the strong hunter guiding her through a scary forest back home to her mother, the shining white light of his sword making all of the shadows run away and hide. There were the fish that her mother said were her stars, a name she couldn't remember how to spell or how to pronounce but that she knew she liked to see written down. The night she had dreamed of them, she had been alone in their stargazing field, the pair of fish dancing around her, swimming through the sky (she knew fish needed water but did star fish need it as well?) and the pretty little creatures had responded so well to being called 'Hannah' and 'Mommy' that when she woke in the morning, she had asked her mother about the time she used to be a fish (a conversation that didn't really earn her an answer and she was still curious).

When Frankie returned to the living room and glanced out of one of the windows, though, she could see clouds breaking apart the bright blue of the sky and a pout formed on her lips. It wasn't going to be a clear night. That meant no open field and no watching the sun set and no counting the stars as they came out. The disappointment didn't last long, though, because even if there was no chance of going to the field, they could still watch the stars from here, and if the clouds got bigger and bigger, well...

Well, she would just draw some stars for Hannah and Mommy, Frankie decided.

She left her popcorn bowl on the small side table at one of the sofa and wiped her hands on the front of the puffy skirt she had dressed herself in that morning while her mother had made her breakfast. Short legs carried Frankie down the hall to her room and what followed was five minutes of destruction and chaos as she searched through all of her toys and her draws. Only once she had found was she looking for did she emerge and return to the living room, a book of plain paper for drawing in one hand and her pencil case full of crayons gripped in the other. An idea formed in her mind, Frankie set herself down on the floor of the living room with her drawing book open to a new page and her crayons strewn out around her to make it easier to find the colours she was after as she needed them and she set to work, popcorn forgotten.

In fact, everything else was forgotten as well. It was either for her to do that, because it always seemed that while time always seemed to go by slowly during normal times, when she was doing something that she was having fun doing and trying to finish something, time always went by really, really fast and ran out before she was finished. It was a call for dinner that broke her concentration, the tip of her tongue sticking out from between pursed lips as she concentrated extra hard on her drawing and finishing at least the little bit she was working on.

"Frankie, come on, don't you want to eat?" Her mother's voice broke through her concentration again, distracting her enough to make a mistake with the yellow crayon in her hand through the green she had already put down, but she wasn't that upset. She decided quickly that she liked it that way.

"Coming, Mommy!" Frankie dropped the crayon onto the floor with the rest and scooped up her drawing with both hands, carrying it over to her mother where she was waiting in the doorway of the kitchen. Once she was closer, she turned the drawing around with a warm smile, holding it up in an offer for it to be taken. "Look, Mommy! It's us! Me and Mommy and Hannah all together in the rocket to go and play with the star dogs and the star bears. And over here are Mommy and Hannah being star fish again."

Her mother's smile reflected the same expression on her daughter's face as she took a moment to take in the drawing, her earlier urgency for dinner abandoned to appreciate Frankie's work. "Is this star fish Hannah?" she asked, lowering the drawing so Frankie could see her pointing to one of the fish. "It has to be. Hannah's the prettiest one, isn't she?"

Frankie gave an affirmative with a pleased nod, a warm feeling tickling in her chest as she watched her mother glancing back towards where Hannah was already seated at the dinner table (though Frankie couldn't really figure out what Hannah's expression meant except that she was happy about it as well). 

"Can Mommy put this on the fridge? Or is it not finished yet?"

"Not finished!" Frankie didn't give her mother much room to say anything else. Instead she pulled the drawing from her hand and carried it back to where she had been seated before so she could place it back down with her crayons. She could finish it later. For now, she had to go and eat dinner before her mother started getting too upset with her (because she had decided that she never liked to see Mommy upset and only wanted to make her smile).

 

—

 

Keeping track of days and nights and days again wasn't the easiest thing for Frankie to do. There was already so many different things happening around her that it was hard enough to keep up with, let alone keeping track of when. She told her days apart by which days she was at kindergarden while her mother worked, and which days she got to stay home and do things with her mother instead. Hannah started becoming a way of telling time, as well. Her visits became more regular, first when she began to pick up Frankie from kindergarden twice a week, and then when she began spending the second day of Frankie's Days With Mommy with then as well (making one day Frankie's Day with Mommy and the second day Frankie's Day With Mommy And Hannah). Then began the days of Hannah Has A Sleepover With Mommy, and the Hannah Drops Frankie Off At Kindergarden. Change was easy enough for the young girl to adjust to, and she did love spending time with Hannah, so having her Mommy's friend spending more and more time with them wasn't something that Frankie was against.

The next change that came, during the preparations for Frankie's birthday (she knew it was coming because her teachers at kindergarden had started asking her what she wanted for her birthday and her Mommy had taken her to look at all the pretty cakes in the bakery near where there house was and asked her what sort of cake she wanted) was the first day that both Hannah and her mother came to pick her up at the end of her day at kindergarden. She had been so excited to see Hannah on a day she didn't normally come to pick her up that Frankie had almost forgotten to say goodbye to all her friends and her teachers before she was skipping out the door with both of them to the car. It was lots of new things in one day. Instead of dinner at home, they went and had dinner in a fancy restaurant (at least, Frankie thought it was fancy with their pretty fish swimming around in a pretty aquarium and the funny looking man with the strange moustache asking what they wanted to eat and bringing them their food and their drinks) and then they all sat in the front of her Mommy's truck and drove along a familiar rode towards the fields and away from the town.

The sky was clear, and Frankie was the first to grab the picnic blanket to lay it out on the ground and lie down on it, staring up at the still sunny sky. She sat up again, though, when Hannah sat down on one corner, the smile she had been wearing earlier gone. A frown pulled at the young girl's lips, and then it pulled further when she saw a similar look on her mother's face, unable to figure out what those faces meant.

"Mommy, are you okay?" She asked, voice timid and worried. Was Mommy upset? She didn't want Mommy to be upset. And she didn't want Hannah to be upset, either. She didn't want anyone to be upset. Being upset was no fun and it wasn't nearly as good as being happy like she could be whenever she was with her Mommy and Hannah. So she sat up properly while her mother sat down beside Hannah and she waited.

"Frankie, me and Hannah have something we want to ask you," her mother eventually started to explain, voice slow and serious (though not in the scary way it could be sometimes whenever Frankie didn't listen to what her mother said). "You know Hannah has been staying with us a lot lately, and we wanted to know how you felt about that. Mommy wants to know if you would be okay if Hannah came and stayed with us all the time. You see, Hannah makes your Mommy very happy, and your Mommy loves Hannah very much, but we don't want to do anything that would make you unhappy."

Frankie didn't really get it. Her Mommy was talking about being happy but they still didn't look it. Her frown formed into a thoughtful pout as she tried to figure out what was being asked. If Hannah was around, then Mommy was happy. And when Hannah was around, Frankie was happy as well. And Mommy wanted Hannah to be around all the time, so that would mean that Mommy would be happy all the time. It seemed like an obvious thing. If Hannah being around all that time meant that Mommy would be happy all the time, and Frankie would be happy because Hannah being there made her happy and her Mommy being happy made her happy, then of course she wanted Hannah to stay.

"So Hannah would be with us all the time?" The young girl asked, her pout slowly pulling up into a much brighter expression, one that reached her eyes with a glint of excitement. "You mean like another Mommy? I would get two Mommys?"

Whatever had been making them both seem unhappy was pushed away by the question. Both her mother and Hannah laughed, and her mother even smiled.

"Yes, like another Mommy," Hannah said, leaning a little closer. "If you want me to be, I would be happy to be your Mommy as well."

"Then of course! I'll be the luckiest girl at the kindy! I get to have two Mommys while everyone else only has one, they'll all be so jealous! And then we can watch the stars together every night! We have to, okay? Starting from tonight. Promise?"

Frankie held a hand out, her little finger held out while the rest of her fingers curled into a loose fist and she looked up at Hannah with a building excitement. It only grew more with a longer, much more delicate pinky finger hooked with her own, Hannah giving a sincere nod.

"I promise.”

 

—

 

Hannah moved in a few days later.

The house was alive with activity and energy and everyone doing their parts. Even Frankie missed a couple of days of going to kindergarden to stay home and help clean. The house was small, two small bedrooms that already had some trouble accommodating the young mother with her single child, but some how they managed to make enough room for Hannah as well. Garbage bags upon garbage bags ended up filled with things that they had been meaning to throw away but had never gotten around to getting rid of, and things that couldn't be thrown away but weren't currently need were neatly packed away in boxes. Frankie even helped to pack up a large box of her toys she didn't play with anymore to take to donate them to children who didn't have as many nice toys as she did. Her Mommy told her it would make the other children happy, so how could she not?

They moved things around in the living room as well, and in the kitchen and in the bedrooms. No room was left untouched by cleaning hands or shifting furniture or a scrutinizing eye carefully planning out everything to make the most of what room there was (Hannah was very good at playing games like that, Frankie learned). Even the yard earned itself a bit of a clean up and rearrangement of old car parts and tools and outdoor toys. Frankie couldn't remember ever seeing so much work being done on the area and she decided that it was because her Mommy had spent long being so busy looking after her that there had just never been time. So while her mother and Hannah were doing things that Frankie was too small and weak to help with, the young girl sat inside on the living room floor with her drawing paper and her crayons, drawing a picture for her mother so she would know how much she loved her.

Frankie started going back to kindergarden even before they had finished entirely, but by then Hannah had moved in with her small amount of belongings (everything in a single box big enough for Frankie to turn into a castle) and they were happy. At least, Frankie was sure they were.

Every day now, breakfast was with Mommy and Hannah, and then she would go to kindergarden. Some days Hannah would take her and some days her mother would take her and sometimes they would both take her. It was the same with picking her up after she was finished, and then on her days not spent at kindergarden, they would always do something together all three of them. Sometimes they would stay at home and sometimes they would go out, but every night they would go outside and watch the stars. On the days that they couldn't (which Frankie would only accept on days when it was raining and they couldn't go outside at all), they would stay inside and Hannah would read her stories about the stars.

A few weeks before her birthday, Frankie finally decided what she wanted her cake to be.

The birthday party came on a warm day in spring, surrounded by friends from her kindergarden and their parents. They gathered in their favourite field, the one perfect for watching the stars, and spent the afternoon running around and playing games before eating a yummy picnic with food made by everyone's parents. The cake was large and square, a dark, dark blue like the night sky. Two star fish, made up of bright spots and thin lines swam in the icing and Frankie couldn't be happier (and even made a point of making sure everyone knew which fish was Mommy and which fish was Hannah) with her name written in silver beneath the creatures from the night skies.

The sun set early (an early day in spring, so the days were growing longer but still not as long as the days in summer would be) and Frankie lay down on a picnic blanket with her best friend Jesse from kindergarden on one side and Matt, the boy she always shared her milk with during snack time, on the other and everyone else around them. The skies held small clouds here and there, but they were able to see some of the stars and Frankie excitedly began to tell all of her friends about all the stories that Hannah had taught. She told them about the hunter and his star dogs, and about the star bears and the bird that flew across the skies. She told them about the pair of star fish that had been on her cake and then she told them about other drawings she had made in the stars. And then her friends joined in, making shapes out of stars the same way they made shapes out of clouds when they played outside. 

Frankie didn't remember falling asleep. She remembered listening to Elliot's story of a rocket he could see drawn in the stars chasing after a pony that Laurie had drawn, and she remembered dreaming of being on a rocket of stars and watching the pony lead the way safely through the stars so that they didn't crash on their journey back to Earth. When she woke, though, she was back in her own bed, short arms doing their best to tightly hug the round moon pillow that Hannah had given her the morning of her birthday.

The room was dark (it must not be morning, yet) but Frankie still got up from her bed, pillow hugged tight to her chest. She pulled open the curtains covering the small window in her bedroom and tiptoed to lean against the windowsill. Bright eyes, a little fuzzy still from sleep, looked up towards the clear sky she could see. The lights of the streets outside made it hard to see all of the stars as clearly, but she could still see the stars that she was looking for.

"Nigh', nigh', Mommy. Nigh', nigh', Hannah," she mumbled sleepily to the swimming star fish, one had lifting to wave at them in the sky, before she pulled the curtain closed again and crawled back into her bed.

 

—

Starting school had, for the last month, been the most exciting thing for Frankie to think about.

The month had started with her last two weeks at the kindergarden, saying goodbye to her teachers she had known for so long now and giving them gifts that she had worked so hard on (with only a little help from Mommy and Hannah). There were handwritten letters and crayon drawings for each teacher, and then she even did the same for each of her friends (even the ones that were going to be leaving the kindergarden soon to start at the same school as her), and her Mommy and Hannah stayed up long after she had gone to bed the night before her last day so that when she woke up, the entire house smelled of freshly baked cookies and cupcakes that she took with her to share with everyone at lunch. But she most certainly didn't cry when Hannah tried to tell her it was time to leave, or hide behind one of her teacher's legs when her Mommy tried to lead her out to the car (except she did, because suddenly the idea of not being able to see these teachers and friends again wasn't that happy, even if going to school meant meeting new teachers and making even more new friends).

The third week had been busy, full of all sorts of activities to get ready for school. Frankie went to what would soon be her school with her mother to meet her teacher and some of her soon-to-be classmates and to see what they do during the day, and even to join in on some of the activities (some of them were fun, but nothing was as fun as what she had done back at the kindergarden). There were a few days of going out with her mother and Hannah together to the store to look for things to buy for school. Pencils and books with lines in them and new crayons. They went bag shopping as well, for a new backpack for Frankie to take everything to school in, and it took almost all day for her to pick one (or, at least, that's what it felt like). Hannah had found the perfect bag for her. It was a little big, maybe, longer than her back when she wore it even with the straps tightened as much as possible, but Frankie still loved it. It fit all the things she needed to take to school in it easily, and it was comfortable to carry, and, more importantly than anything, it was like night sky. There were stars everywhere, some very bright and others not so easily visible, and she could pick out a few of the star creatures living in her bag (with a little help from Hannah, of course). The hunter was there, with one of his star dogs, and on the back were the pair of star fish, suspended in the almost black background.

Another day was spent shopping for clothes, though Frankie wasn't sure why. She liked the clothes that she had and she wasn't sure why she needed new clothing. But they hardly ever went shopping for clothing, especially for her, so she made sure to enjoy the day. She tried on as many different shirts as she could find and at least ten different skirts (maybe more than that, but she ran out of fingers to count on) and her Mommy even found some dresses for her to try on, which she happily did. The weather was getting warmer, so she couldn't go and try on the jackets or warmer clothes (she was allowed to do that when it started to get closer to Christmas, her Mommy told her), and all the clothing she chose was shorter for the warm sumer coming soon. A part of shorts and two new shirts with short sleeves, a summer dress with sunflowers all over it and a black skirt with what Hannah said were galaxies colouring the black with greens and blues. When they got home that day, Frankie spent the entire afternoon matching up all the new clothes with all her old ones, and Hannah helped her put together what she said was the perfect outfit for her first day at school.

The last week before her first day of school was a lot slower and a lot less exciting. Her mother had to work almost every day, so she was never home for the day, instead out with the truck, helping people. It left Frankie home with Hannah all day until her mother would get home in time for dinner, or sometimes a little earlier, but the young girl didn't mind. She enjoyed all the spare time with Hannah.

Sure, one or two of the days were cleaning days, where Frankie would clean her room a little or help Hannah cleaning up some areas, or sit on the floor in the living room to stay out of the way while Hannah cleaned places that Frankie couldn't help with, but they always followed the cleaning with sitting down and watching cartoons together. Another day, they went out for a walk together and told a fantastic story about the star dogs chasing the star bird across the skies (Hannah used a lot of big words that day, words that Frankie was sure that she was making up just to make the story even more interesting, so, naturally, Frankie had done that same). They retold their story that night to her mother over dinner ('they' being mostly Frankie while Hannah helped with the difficult made-up words, that even her Mommy seemed to understand, so maybe they weren't made up) and then Frankie drew a picture of it after dinner all the way up until bath time and then bed time.

Frankie's favourite day of the week, though, was the day she and Hannah walked to the supermarket together because the weather was nice and warm and sunny and there were only a few clouds in the sky and they weren't going to buying much so walking was okay. They had gone to the supermarket to buy food for dinner and they had spent the entire time in the store talking about all the different things that they could eat (and then in the end settled on something simple that Frankie loved; three bean surprise).

But with all the excitement and enjoyment that came with getting ready for the first day of school, by the time the day actually arrived, Frankie was suddenly, well... not so excited.

She had gotten used to the last week of staying home all day with just Hannah and doing things with Hannah during the day and then having dinner and recounting their exciting day (because it was always exciting even if they didn't actually do all that much) over dinner once her mother was home and enjoying a bed time story from them both before she went to sleep. She had decided she would much rather have that kind of thing everyday, staying home with Hannah who she knew rather than getting out of bed and going to school where she wouldn't have Hannah or even her Mommy and only be surrounded by teachers and other children that she didn't know (even though she knew that there were a couple other children from the kindergarden that were going to be in her same class).

Waking up to a morning smelling of warm breakfast and fresh cupcakes and even a hint of cookies as well, the temptation to run to the kitchen was hard to resist. That is, until Frankie looked at her bag packed and sitting on the chair in her room along with the clothing she had picked out to wear that day and she pulled the blankets over her head to try and stay in the darkness and ignore Hannah's persistence that she needed to get up and get dressed and eat breakfast because, "It's your first day of school, Frankie, aren't you excited to go?"

"No," was the muffled answer from under the blankets and her grip tightened on the bedsheets when she felt them being tugged. She stood no chance, of course, her grip easily giving way to a frowning Hannah sitting down on the edge of her bed.

"No?" Hannah sounded worried. Frankie didn't like that tone of voice. "Why not? You were so excited yesterday. Why don't you want to go?"

"I want to stay home with Hannah." The pillow became the young girl's new method of hiding away, until that, too, was gentle removed from her grasp and moved aside. "It's more fun with Hannah!"

"But school will be fun, too," the worried voice insisted, a hand petting over the girl's soft hair. "And then when you finish school, you can come home and tell me all about it. Just because you're going to school doesn't mean I'll be gone. It's just like kindergarden. Just... a different place with different people."

"But why can't I just stay at home with Hannah?"

"Because all little girls and boys go to school. Just think of all the things you'll learn, and then you can come back home and teach me and Mommy. I bet you'll learn so much that us silly adults don't know."

"Y-You think so..?"

Hannah laughed and Frankie finally sat up, smiling a little when she found the worry in her voice and face had turned happier again instead. "I know so, Frankie," she insisted before she stood up to collect the girl's clothing. "And remember what Mommy said. Because it's your first day, if it's really, really bad, then you can come home early. But you have to give it a really good try, okay? And if you make it through the entire day, we'll take you out to the field to watch the stars, okay?"

"... Promise?"

A large hand reached out, all the fingers curled into a loose fist except for the littlest finger.

"Promise."

Frankie grinned brightly and held out her own hand in the same way, hooking her pinky finger onto Hannah's before she finally bounced off of her bed to take the clothing from her. "Okay! I'll spend the whole day at school then!"

The same larger hand unfurled and ruffled the girl's hair again before Hannah finally left the bedroom, leaving Frankie to tug herself out of her pyjamas and into the clothing she had chosen for the day. The galaxy skirt with some black leggings on underneath and a green shirt she had found in her closet that matched the green of the swirling shapes on the flowing skirt's material. After she was dressed, she pulled on socks as well, so she wouldn't forget when they were going to leave, and then she brushed her hair (but only a little, because her Mommy was going to do her hair for her anyway, so she decided that she would let her brush it properly then). Finally, she grabbed her bag and carried it out of her room and into the living room where she placed it onto the couch.

"There you are, Frankie."

Her mother's voice caught her attention and she smiled, wandering into the kitchen where her mother was setting up food on the dining table. The air smelled so warm and sweet, and there were cupcakes on one counter, and the cookie jar was definitely more full than it had been, but, more importantly, on the plate in front of her usual seat at the table was a tall stack of pancakes. Hannah was already seated at the table and eating her own pancakes between mouthfuls of coffee from a plain white mug.

"Come and eat up, darling," her mother said once she finished piling the pancakes on the three plates. "If you don't eat quickly then we'll be late getting you to school and then you'll miss out on fun things that they're doing today."

Frankie wasn't sure if that was true or not, but she was excited for pancakes (but then who wouldn't be, she wondered) and she was quick to pull herself onto her chair, waiting for a brief moment as her chair was gently pushed in so she was closer to the table, and then began to eat the pancakes (but only after grabbing for the syrup bottle and squeezing as much syrup over the delicious smelling food as she could before Hannah could notice and took the bottle from her little hands).

The pancakes turned into what was almost a disaster. Between her excitement for the breakfast and her uncomfortable anticipation for school (and the promise Hannah had made to her when she had woken up), Frankie almost ended up wearing her breakfast rather than simply eating it. Her mother came to her rescue, though, grabbing the kitchen paper towels and tucking one into the front of her daughter's shirt and then laying a couple over her lap to catch any syrup from ending up on her new clothes (the last thing that they needed was for Frankie to have to spend hours trying to decide on a new outfit simply because one piece ended up dirty before even leaving the house). Once she was finished eaten, her syrup covered face was cleaned up with a warm face cloth by Hannah, an ordeal made longer by Frankie's endless giggling over the situation and by the fact that her mother was attempting to brush her hair at the same time and pull it back into a ponytail so it would stay off of her face for the day at school. She disappeared into the bathroom afterwards to clean her teeth and then sat in the front doorway to put on her shoes (Hannah helping her with the laces and the bunny running around the tree) before being lifted into the cab of the truck, Hannah helping carry her bag for her.

It wasn't quite the perfect execution, with Hannah having to go back inside because she forgot something and spending a few minutes searching for it, but eventually they were off, Frankie in the middle with Hannah to one side and her mother in the driver's seat and her backpack in her lap, short arms wrapped around it as best she could, hugging it for some sort of comfort.

Arriving at school, the grounds were calm and quiet, broken by the muffled sound of children in classrooms as they all gathered for the start of the day. The truck was parked and Hannah helped Frankie out of the cab and the three walked together to the school's main office where Frankie had already been before. Really, Frankie didn't understand most of what her mother and Hannah talked about when they met with a teacher she met the last time she had visited (she could remember her Mommy telling her that the short round lady was the teacher who looked after all the little girls and boys the same age as them as well as looked after all of the other teachers as well). She sat quietly in her chair, bag still hugged to her chest and legs swinging back and forth.

After what felt like forever, they finally left the round lady's office and she lead them through the school. She had done the same thing the last time, Frankie could remember, but instead of showing them all around the school again, this time she simply lead all three of them directly to her classroom. The class was in the middle of reading a book when they arrived, the teacher sitting on her chair with the children gathered on the mat in front of her, and Frankie was quickly ushered to the front of the class so that she could be introduced and have a buddy picked so that there was someone who could show her how to do all the things it was that school children did. She could see two friends from her kindergarden who had left before she had, but neither of them were picked. Instead, a darker-skinned girl with hair curly like a pig's tail was chosen (Keisha, she introduced herself as when she was showing Frankie where to hang up her backpack) and Frankie found herself sitting beside her on the mat (and later at the same table together).

After she was settled in to listen to the rest of the story with her classmates, she heard the round lady speaking again, quietly, from where they had been watching from near the door.

"You're both welcome to stay and observe if you'd like," she said. "And if she ends up too tired or too stressed out by the change, you're welcome to pick her up early as well."

"I don't think that will be a problem," Hannah spoke just as quietly with a smile on her lips. "I think she'll get through the day just fine."

"And she'll be okay without us," Kim added. "Once she's settled in, she'll forget we even exist. So we won't need to stay."

"It's all up to you."

The sound of the classroom door opening caught Frankie's attention (amongst the attention of some other children) away from the story and she turned her head to watch the round lady leave. Both her mother and Hannah paused when they saw her and turned back to wave a farewell. Instead of just waving back, though, Frankie was quick to her feet and across the small gap between them to wrap her arms around her Mommy in a hug, and then around Hannah as well to say goodbye properly.

"Have a good day, sweetie," her mother pressed a kiss to her head.

"And don't forget our promise, okay?" Hannah added, her hand holding the door open.

Frankie nodded (twice) and waved as both women stepped out through the door and let it close behind them. Once it was properly closed, she turned back around and walked back to the mat, sitting back down next to Keisha to finish listening to their story without any other interruptions.

Almost.

A hand patted her knee and her attention turned to her new friend, dark curl's bouncing as Keisha giggled.

"You have two mommys," she said quietly while the teacher continued to read out loud. "I wish I had two mommys. Then I'd get twice as many mommy hugs and twice as much mommy baking. I'd get two bedtime stories, as well! You're so lucky, Frankie!”

 

—

 

"And then during break time, me and Keisha and Ashley went a played on the playground and tried to see who could swing the highest on the swing and Ashley swung really really high! And then she jumped off! While she was still up in the air she jumped off! She said that she saw some older kids doing it and that me and Keisha shouldn't try. But I really want to try it and so did Keisha. And Keisha really flew as well, really like a bird. But she didn't land very well and she rolled around on the ground and tried to trip Ashley up. And then we went back into the classroom because break was over and we started playing games with numbers. It was really, really fun to play. But then I was getting really tired and almost sleeping on the table when we were playing..."

Getting through the first school day from start to finish was easier said than done. Frankie had almost made it through, but after almost falling asleep a number of times following the lunch break despite having eaten and despite having rested, the teacher had decided that it would be best for her to finish earlier as much as she hadn't wanted to (she had to make it through the whole day so she could go and see the stars).

It was Hannah who picked her up in the end (her mother busy working), and it was Hannah who came was stuck listening to Frankie's stories of the day, starting from every single thing that has done throughout the day since Hannah and her mother had left the classroom right up until Hannah picked her up from the main office. The stories were a little disjointed and out of order and ranged from being told in a super enthusiastic tone to being told in an almost monotonous tone of voice, punctuated by unpredicted yawns and a lack of energy as the young girl fought against tired exhaustion by telling more and more stories to stop herself from falling asleep (a failed attempt, in the end, Frankie's eyes closing and consciousness slipping into the dream world when they were about halfway home).

When she awoke again, she was back in her own bed, curled up under her own plush bedsheets, with the curtains drawn closed. She couldn’t tell what time of day it was, except that there was light peeking into the darkness whenever the curtains shifted in the breeze running through slightly open windows, and she could hear the familiar sound of clanking and gentle crashing in the kitchen of someone preparing food. There was another sound as well, something just as familiar, and an excited burst hit Frankie as she realized it was the sound of her favourite cartoon starting (not that she stopped to think why whoever was in the kitchen had the cartoons on while she wasn’t there to watch them, because, in her mind, the cartoons were always on for the same shows regardless of anything else).

Any considerations of sleeping any more (as much as she kind of wanted to, her body still feeling tired from the energy it had taken to get through as much of the day as she had) were gone with the excitement and she clambered out of her bed. She didn't bother to stop and fix the blankets, though she did take her squishy moon pillow with her, the plushness hugged to her chest as she quickly made her way out of her dark bedroom and into the light-filled house towards the living room. From the door of the living room, she made a beeline for the empty couch, sitting herself down on the edge of it, eyes glued to the television screen and never looking anywhere else.

"Oh, you are up, Frankie." Even the sound of Hannah's voice from the doorway didn't distract the young girl's attention, at least not for very long. Her words earned her a short glance and a smile before the attention was back on the show, caught up in the animated movements of the talking animals. Hannah didn't seem to mind. She smiled in return and let long, smooth fingers ruffle the girl's hair before she returned to the kitchen to continuing doing whatever it was she had been doing before she noticed Frankie's appearance (making dinner was Frankie's guess). 

She returned a few minutes later with a bowl in hand, dry cereal inside it, and placed it in the girl's lap for her to snack on while she waited. Frankie hadn't realized she was hungry at all until she placed the first piece in her mouth, and then she easily fell into a rhythm of lifting a piece or two at a time to her mouth, chewing and swallowing in time for the next pieces. Until she ran out, at least, and then she placed the bowl on the floor and pulled herself up onto the couch fully, curling up with her pillow (she wasn't tired or anything anymore; this was just more comfortable).

When her cartoon finally finished, Frankie picked up her empty bowl and carried it into the kitchen. She had to tiptoe to drop it into the sink, but Hannah helped to sit it down properly in the bottom so that the other carefully stacked dishes didn't fall over.

"What's for dinner?" she asked, hands on the edge of the kitchen counter, standing up as high as she possibly could reach on her toes, trying her best to see the chopping board that Hannah was using and the pots and pans on the stove, but, try as she might, the only thing she could properly manage to make out was a half-chopped carrot sitting on the chopping board and the clear container for food scraps with carrot skin peelings and egg shells and other scraps that she didn't really recognize that well inside.

"Well, I figured since you did so well with school today and you did your best," Hannah said, glancing down to her before returning her attention to cutting up the carrot with care so that she didn't end up cutting her fingers instead. "That we could have three bean surprise for dinner and a bunch of other nice food and then we can go have a picnic dinner out in the field and watch the stars. How does that sound, hm?"

The carrot nicely chopped, Hannah looked down to Frankie again in time to see the excitement brightening the young girl's eyes, pulling them wider and pulling a bright smile onto her lips. Short arms wrapped around the woman's legs in hug and only let go when they were pulled away so Hannah could lift her up off the ground instead for a proper hug. Frankie's arms wrapped around her neck then, instead, and she nuzzled her soft face in between her arm and Hannah's neck as best as she could manage.

"Sounds like a good idea, huh?" Hannah laughed when she realized she wasn't going to get a proper vocalized answer just yet, but she didn't put the young girl back down immediately. Instead, she continued to hug her as she began to hum happily, a song that Frankie now found familiar, one that Hannah had started using to help her fall asleep at night back when she was still only visiting a couple of nights each which. So Frankie hummed along, feet swinging a little until they were guided to wrap around Hannah's waist as well to help keep her up and prevent her from falling to the floor. "Do you want to help me decide what else we should bring? And maybe you can help make some food. If we get everything finished before Mommy gets home, then we can leave straight away and maybe even be there in time for the sunset."

As if Frankie needed any other sort of motivation to be able to go out to see the stars. She pulled her head back, arms staying wrapped around Hannah's neck more as a support now to help her, and she nodded with even more excitement (because there was no such thing as too much excitement when it came to dinner picnics and sunsets and watching the stars). "We need to take ice cream!"

"Ice cream?"

"And cake!"

"Ice cream and cake." Hannah hummed in thought. "But don't you think the ice cream will melt by the time we get there and eat dinner? And I don't know if we have enough time to bake a cake before Mommy gets home. We have to make the batter and then bake it and then wait for it to cool so we can ice it and decorate it."

Frankie's face fell a little, lips pursing into either a pout or something more thoughtful. "Cookies?" Those took less time to bake, right? A cake always took forever and ever to bake, but cookies took hardly any time at all and just took a while to make the mix for and they didn't need to be decorated, either (and, really, the young girl always thought they tasted best warm fresh out of the oven than any other time).

Hannah fell silent for a moment, looking over what she had started preparing for dinner, before she looked back to the girl in her arms and gave a positive nod.

"Cookies, then. You can help me make them.”

 

—

 

The idea of cookies had been to make the idea of a homemade dessert for their picnic easier. Maybe the problem had been in letting Frankie do a lot of it by herself with only a little supervision. It could have turned out worse, of course. The kitchen could have caught on fire, the entire house could have burnt down, there could have been some serious injuries. In the end, the flour had ended up knocked over and on the floor (Hannah's fault), the chocolate chips had disappeared into someone's (Frankie's) mouth more than they had gone into the cookie mix, and a large chunk of the cookie dough had disappeared as well before the cookies even made it to the baking tray (both of them were at fault for it, honestly).

By the time Kim returned home, the kitchen was half-white with spilled flour and Frankie was sitting on the floor near the oven watching the cookies bake and Hannah was trying to finish up the last of the parts for dinner that she was almost done with, and there was a silent question of who was going to clean the kitchen and when.

A question easily ignored by Frankie jumping up at the sound of the door closing with a happy cheer of, "Mommy!" as she ran from the kitchen to the front door and into her mother's waiting arms, lifted into her second carried hug of the day. Flour and sugar and baking powder stuck to her clothing easily transferred to her mother's much darker clothing, sticking out like the stars in the night sky, and when they reached the kitchen, Hannah smiled (though it looked a little different to what Frankie was used to seeing and she thought it might have to do with how messy the kitchen was now).

There were no words exchanged between the two women, only a brief kiss shared (which Frankie copied, though her kiss was to her Mommy's cheek rather than her lips like Hannah's had been, and was more lingering and came with the necessary _mwah!_ sound effects) before all three of them looked over the kitchen together. Eventually, a laugh broke through and Frankie felt herself being bounced on her mother's hips.

"You two look like you had a fun afternoon, didn't you?" She commented, pressing a matching kiss to her daughter's cheek before setting her down. "Those cookies smell good, don't they? Did you make those yourself, Frankie?"

"Hannah helped too!"

"Well, I think they're pretty much done. So why don't we get them out of the oven then we can pack up dinner and go and have our picnic, okay?" Kim smiled, pulling the oven door open to check on the baking and carefully sliding the tray out with an oven mitt. "And then we can worry about cleaning when we get back."

The cookies cooling on a tray on the counter, Frankie found herself ushered to her room to get changed out of her flour-covered clothing (the same clothing she had worn to school that day, Hannah having just put her to bed straight after getting home without trying to change her clothes) and into something clean and warmer (because her Mommy said it was going to be a cold night because of how few clouds there were in the sky to keep the earth warm tonight). By the time she had picked what she wanted to wear and gotten changed and put her dirty clothing in the laundry hamper and gone back to the kitchen, the cookies were packed away in a plastic container and all the food for dinner was packed away as well and even the kitchen was starting to look a little cleaner. The flour that had covered the floor was cleaned away and all the dirty dishes had been stacked beside and inside the sink and the countertops and tabletop had been wiped down at least a little to give space to stack the various containers until they could be put into a bag.

Frankie helped her mother with carrying the lighter things to the truck (like the picnic mat and some blankets and a couple of pillows in case the ground was hard) while Hannah carried the heavier food bags, and the sun was only just beginning to set when they left. The roads were quiet and it made for a short trip and by the time they arrived and laid out the picnic blanket and set out the food, it was just in time to watch as the sky began to change through the colours of fire and the sun slowly started to disappear beyond the horizon.

It had completely set before they managed to finish their dinner (Frankie somehow managing to get more of it on the napkin tucked into her shirt and around her mouth than she managed to actually eat, but she enjoyed it all the same and both her mother and Hannah had simply laughed at her antics) and they carefully packed all the containers away again into the bag they had used to carry everything. The container of cookies came out next, some of them still warm to the touch from having not completely cooled down from being in the oven, and even if it wasn't quite the same as being fresh hot out of the oven with the chocolate chips all melted and gooey, Frankie still though they tasted pretty good, because the dough was still warm and the chocolate chips might not have been melted and gooey but the were still soft and melted in her mouth as she chewed and she was pretty sure they were the best cookies she had ever eaten (better, even, than anything her Mommy had ever made, but she wouldn't say that out loud because then maybe her Mommy would never bake her cookies ever again and she really loved her Mommy's cookies).

The temperature had started to drop with the disappearance of the sun as well, the spring air still crisp and not quite catching the coming summer's warmth just yet, so Hannah pulled the blankets and pillows from the truck and they lay down on their picnic blanket with their heads on pillows and two large blankets covering all three of them and watched the sky, Frankie lying in the middle of them both.

These night picnics watching the stars were never really different each time they did them, Frankie knew that, but she always enjoyed them. Even if the sky always looked the same to her, and they usually talked about the same creatures in the sky and told the same stories, she always enjoyed being out there to watch them and to be with Hannah and be with her Mommy and be together and happy. Being happy was her favourite thing, and she was able to be happy with it even when they all stopped telling stories and instead fell silent and watched the stars and looked for satellites moving across the sky and sometimes found planes, as well, with their blinking lights. And sometimes, if they were lucky, something even more amazing would catch her eye in the silence.

"A shooting star!" she called, short arm reaching to point towards where the line had appeared and disappeared in a blink.

"Don't forget to make a wish, Frankie," Hannah reminded her.

"I wish that me and Mommy and Hannah can be happy together forever!"

"Sweetie, you're not meant to say it out loud," her mother said with a laugh. "If you say a wish out loud, then it makes  it harder for it to come true."

Frankie pouted and closed her eyes, squeezing them as tight shut as she could for a few seconds before she opened them again. "Okay, I said it in my head as well. Now it has to come true!"

There was another round of laughter, broken by a brief kiss as Hannah pressed her lips to Kim's with a smile.

"It already has come true."

There was another pout on Frankie's lips, nose crinkling a little. Her fake-upset, "What about my kiss?" earned her more laughter and a kiss pressed to each cheek before her expression broke into a smile again. She lay back down properly, curling up a little under the blankets while she went back to watching the sky and fighting off sleep. One of her mother's hands moved to pet at her soft hair, a smile on her own lips.

"I think you're right, Hannah."


End file.
